OpenStack / Cloud / Virtualizaton / Linux

Meld — Graphical Merge and Diff Tool for Linux

Meld is a very nice tool for those who cant stand to use diff to compare the differenced between two text files. If you have either the rpmforge repo or the epel repo configured you can install it via yum. Note: I am using Centos 5.4 which is a bit dated, so you might find a newer version in your repo depending on the OS that you are running.

Anyway, once installed you can compare two files like so

>meld syslog.conf syslog.conf.orig

This will pop up a side by side comparison of the two files in an Xwindow, so make sure that you have forwarding enabled. You might need to ssh -X to your server.

Meld is not new by any means – the project's sourceforge page shows that its the latest meld version (1.5) was release. The version that I installed via my rpmforge repo is even older (1.1.5). Again I am running Centos 5.4.

Meld can also be used to merge two files together and perform a diff on directory structures, however just having a nice looking diff is enough for me.